Interesting article from this weekends newspapers. John Snowden of Tampa discovered a large collection of family letters from the Civil War while going through his grandmothers papers recently. Some of the letters were written by George Shoop who is the writer of several letters in the UC-Santa Barbara special collection of letters of soldiers from the 102nd Pennsylvania Infantry. The article is a bit misleading in saying that Shoop was the only survivor of the war included in the UC-Santa Barbara collection. The website states he is the only one represented in the collection to remain in service until the end of the war. Not important to this article but I just wanted to clarify it after finding different information.
An interesting article and hopefully Mr. Snowden can achieve his goal of transcribing and posting these letters online. According to the article he would also like to publish them with a running narrative.
That's really something, isn't it? Amazing that all this stuff is resurfacing this late. I hope he does get it up on the Web, or at least publishes it via POD or similar and makes it for sale.
ReplyDeleteThere were other small details that Keith got wrong, but I feel that he did a fine job on the story. Thank you for your post of interest, Robert. (JS)
ReplyDeletePart of another letter by George Shoop to his sister Mary;
Camp Tennally D. C. Jan 31st 1862
..."There was a difficulty between two men of Co. D on Tuesday evening a little after 6 o’clock which resulted in the death of 2 men it happened as follows. Two men of Co. D by the name Young + Grogan had a quarrel. When Young tauntingly said if he had another white man he could whip the whole Co. Young is American born + Grogan is an Irishman the whole Co is made up of Irish or near all them whereupon Grogan who it appears loaded a gun on purpose, took it up and took deliberate on the other and fired, the ball going through his head and struck another young man of Co. H who was on guard at the time and near a hundred yards away from the others and passing clear through his chest near the heart. They both died almost instantly..."
Anyone interested can contact me at shoopletters@(no spam)gmail.com
Thanks again John Snowden